‘Well, have you anything to tell me? Let us find a quiet corner and sit down.’
We sought a place and found it.
‘I must explain why I asked you to come here,’ she said. ‘Edward is staying with me. At first he did not want to come, but I persuaded him. But he’s nervous and ill and irritable. I did not want to run the risk of his seeing you.’
I told Mrs Trafford the bare facts of my story and she listened attentively. Now and then she nodded her head. But I could not hope to make her understand the commotion I had found at Blackstable. The town was beside itself with excitement. Nothing so thrilling had happened there for years, and no one could talk of anything else. Humpty-dumpty had had a great fall. Lord George Kemp had absconded. About a week before he had announced that he had to go up to London on business, and two days later a petition in bankruptcy was filed against him. It appeared that his building operations had not been successful, his attempt to make Blackstable into a frequented seaside resort meeting with no response, and he had been forced to raise money in every way he could. All kinds of rumours ran through the little town. Quite a number of small people who had entrusted their savings to him were faced with the loss of all they had. The details were vague, for neither my uncle nor my aunt knew anything of business matters, nor had I the knowledge to make what they told me comprehensible. But there was a mortgage on George Kemp’s house and a bill of sale on his furniture. His wife was left without a penny. His two sons, lads of twenty and twenty-one, were in the coal business, but that too was involved in the general ruin. George Kemp had gone off with all the cash he could lay hands on, something like fifteen hundred pounds, they said, though how they knew I cannot imagine; and it was reported that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. It was supposed that he had left the country; some said he had gone to Australia and some to Canada.
‘I hope they catch him,’ said my uncle. ‘He ought to get penal servitude for life.’
The indignation was universal. They could not forgive him because he had always been so noisy and boisterous, because he had chaffed them and stood them drinks and given them garden parties, because he had driven such a smart trap and worn his brown billycock hat at such a rakish angle. But it was on Sunday night after church in the vestry that the churchwarden told my uncle the worst. For the last two years he had been meeting Rosie Driffield at Haversham almost every week and they had been spending the night together at a public-house. The licensee of this had put money into one of Lord George’s wildcat schemes, and on discovering that he had lost it blurted out the whole story. He could have borne it if Lord George had defrauded others, but that he should defraud him who had done him a good turn and whom he looked upon as a chum, that was the limit.
‘I expect they’ve run away together,’ said my uncle.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said the churchwarden.
After supper, while the housemaid was clearing away, I went into the kitchen to talk to Mary-Ann. She had been at church and had heard the story too. I cannot believe that the congregation had listened very attentively to my uncle’s sermon.
‘The vicar says they’ve run away together,’ I said. I had not breathed a word of what I knew.
‘Why, of course they ’ave,’ said Mary-Ann. ‘He was the only man she ever really fancied. He only ’ad to lift ’is little finger and she’d leave anyone, no matter who it was.’
I lowered my eyes. I was suffering from bitter mortification, and I was angry with Rosie: I thought she had behaved very badly to me.
‘I suppose we shall never see her again,’ I said.
It gave me a pang to utter the words.
‘I don’t suppose we shall,’ said Mary-Ann cheerfully.
When I had told Mrs Barton Trafford as much of this story as I thought she need know, she sighed, but whether from satisfaction or distress I had no notion.
‘Well, that’s the end of Rosie at all events,’ she said. She got up and held out her hand. ‘Why will these literary men make these unfortunate marriages? It’s all very sad, very sad. Thank you so much for what you’ve done. We know where we are now. The great thing is that it shouldn’t interfere with Edward’s work.’
Her remarks seemed a trifle disconnected to me. The fact was, I have no doubt, that she was giving me not the smallest thought. I led her out of Victoria Station and put her into a bus that went down the King’s Road, Chelsea; then I walked back to my lodgings.
21
I lost touch with Driffield, I was too shy to seek him out; I was busy with my examinations, and when I had passed them I went abroad. I remember vaguely to have seen in the paper that he had divorced Rosie. Nothing more was heard of her. Small sums reached her mother occasionally, ten or twenty pounds, and they came in a registered letter with a New York postmark; but no address was given, no message enclosed, and they were presumed to come from Rosie only because no one else could possibly send Mrs Gann money. Then in the fullness of years Rosie’s mother died, and it may be supposed that in some way the news reached her, for the letters ceased to come.
22
Alroy Kear and I, as arranged, met on Friday at Victoria Station to catch the five-ten to Blackstable. We made ourselves comfortable in opposite corners of a smoking compartment. From him I now learned roughly what had happened to Driffield after his wife ran away from him. Roy had in due course become very intimate with Mrs Barton Trafford. Knowing him and remembering her, I realized that this was inevitable. I was not surprised to hear that he had travelled with her and Barton on the Continent, sharing with them to the full their passion for Wagner, post-impressionist painting, and baroque architecture. He had lunched assiduously at the flat in Chelsea, and when advancing years and failing health had imprisoned Mrs Trafford to her drawing-room, notwithstanding the many claims on his time he had gone regularly once a week to sit with her. He had a good heart. After her death he wrote an article about her in which with admirable emotion he did justice to her great gifts of sympathy and discrimination.
It pleased me to think that his kindliness should receive its due and unexpected reward, for Mrs Barton Trafford had told him much about Edward Driffield that could not fail to be of service to him in the work of love on which he was now engaged. Mrs Barton Trafford, exercising a gentle violence, not only took Edward Driffield into her house when the flight of his faithless wife left him what Roy could only describe by the French word désemparé, but persuaded him to stay for nearly a year. She gave him the loving care, the unfailing kindness, and the intelligent understanding of a woman who combined feminine tact with masculine vigour, a heart of gold with an unerring eye for the main chance. It was in her flat that he finished By Their Fruits. She was justified in looking upon it as her book and the dedication to her is a proof that Driffield was not unmindful of his debt. She took him to Italy (with Barton of course, for Mrs Trafford knew too well how malicious people were, to give occasion for scandal) and with a volume of Ruskin in her hand revealed to Edward Driffield the immortal beauties of that country. Then she found him rooms in the Temple, and arranged little luncheons there, she acting very prettily the part of hostess, where he could receive the persons whom his increasing reputation attracted.
It must be admitted that this increasing reputation was very largely due to her. His great celebrity came only during his last years when he had long ceased to write, but the foundations of it were undoubtedly laid by Mrs Trafford’s untiring efforts. Not only did she inspire (and perhaps write not a little, for she had a dexterous pen) the article that Barton at last contributed to the Quarterly in which the claim was first made that Driffield must be ranked with the masters of British fiction, but as each book came out she organized its reception. She went here and there, seeing editors and, more important still, proprietors of influential organs; she gave soirées to which everyone was invited who could be of use. She persuaded Edward Driffield to give readings at the houses of the very great for charitable purposes; she saw to it that his photograph sh
ould appear in the illustrated weeklies; she revised personally any interview he gave. For ten years she was an indefatigable press agent. She kept him steadily before the public.
Mrs Barton Trafford had a grand time, but she did not get above herself. It was useless indeed to ask him to a party without her; he refused. And when she and Barton and Driffield were invited anywhere to dinner they came together and went together. She never let him out of her sight. Hostesses might rave; they could take it or leave it. As a rule they took it. If Mrs Barton Trafford happened to be a little out of temper it was through him she showed it, for while she remained charming, Edward Driffield would be uncommonly gruff. But she knew exactly how to draw him out and when the company was distinguished could make him brilliant. She was perfect with him. She never concealed from him her conviction that he was the greatest writer of his day, she not only referred to him invariably as the master, but, perhaps a little playfully and yet how flatteringly, addressed him always as such. To the end she retained something kittenish.
Then a terrible thing happened. Driffield caught pneumonia and was extremely ill; for some time his life was despaired of. Mrs Barton Trafford did everything that such a woman could do, and would willingly have nursed him herself, but she was frail, she was indeed over sixty, and he had to have professional nurses. When at last he pulled through, the doctors said that he must go into the country, and since he was still extremely weak insisted that a nurse should go with him. Mrs Trafford wanted him to go to Bournemouth so that she could run down for weekends and see that everything was well with him, but Driffield had a fancy for Cornwall, and the doctors agreed that the mild airs of Penzance would suit him. One would have thought that a woman of Isabel Trafford’s delicate intuition would have had some foreboding of ill. No. She let him go. She impressed on the nurse that she entrusted her with a grave responsibility; she placed in her hands, if not the future of English literature, at least the life and welfare of its most distinguished living representative. It was a priceless charge.
Three weeks later Edward Driffield wrote and told her that he had married his nurse by special licence.
I imagine that never did Mrs Barton Trafford exhibit more pre-eminently her greatness of soul than in the manner in which she met this situation. Did she cry, Judas, Judas? Did she tear her hair and fall on the floor and kick her heels in an attack of hysterics? Did she turn on the mild and learned Barton and call him a blithering old fool? Did she inveigh against the faithlessness of men and the wantonness of women or did she relieve her wounded feelings by shouting at the top of her voice a string of those obscenities with which the alienists tell us the chastest females are surprisingly acquainted? Not at all. She wrote a charming letter of congratulation to Driffield and she wrote to his bride telling her that she was glad to think that now she would have two loving friends instead of one. She begged them both to come and stay with her on their return to London. She told everyone she met that the marriage had made her very, very happy, for Edward Driffield would soon be an old man, and must have someone to take care of him; who could do this better than a hospital nurse? She never had anything but praise for the new Mrs Driffield; she was not exactly pretty, she said, but she had a very nice face; of course she wasn’t quite, quite a lady, but Edward would only have been uncomfortable with anyone too grand. She was just the sort of wife for him. I think it may be not unjustly said that Mrs Barton Trafford fairly ran over with the milk of human kindness, but all the same I have an inkling that if ever the milk of human kindness was charged with vitriol, here was a case in point.
23
When we arrived at Blackstable, Roy and I, a car, neither ostentatiously grand nor obviously cheap, was waiting for him, and the chauffeur had a note for me asking me to lunch with Mrs Driffield next day. I got into a taxi and went to the Bear and Key. I had learned from Roy that there was a new Marine Hotel on the front, but I did not propose for the luxuries of civilization to abandon a resort of my youth. Change met me at the railway station, which was not in its old place, but up a new road, and of course it was strange to be driven down the High Street in a car. But the Bear and Key was unaltered. It received me with its old churlish indifference: there was no one at the entrance, the driver put my bag down and drove away; I called, no one answered; I went into the bar and found a young lady with shingled hair reading a book by Mr Compton Mackenzie. I asked her if I could have a room. She gave me a slightly offended look, and said she thought so, but as that seemed to exhaust her interest in the matter I asked politely whether there was anyone who could show it to me. She got up and, opening a door, in a shrill voice called: ‘Katie.’
‘What is it?’ I heard.
‘There’s a gent wants a room.’
In a little while appeared an ancient and haggard female in very dirty print dress, with an untidy mop of grey hair, and showed me, two flights up, a very small grubby room.
‘Can’t you do something better than that for me?’ I asked.
‘It’s the room commercials generally ’ave,’ she answered with a sniff.
‘Haven’t you got any others?’
‘Not single.’
‘Then give me a double room,’
‘I’ll go and ask Mrs Brentford.’
I accompanied her down to the first floor and she knocked at a door. She was told to come in, and when she opened it I caught sight of a stout woman with grey hair elaborately marcelled. She was reading a book. Apparently everyone at the Bear and Key was interested in literature. She gave me an indifferent look when Katie said I wasn’t satisfied with number seven.
‘Show him number five,’ she said.
I began to feel that I had been a trifle rash in declining so haughtily Mrs Driffield’s invitation to stay with her and then putting aside in my sentimental way Roy’s wise suggestion that I should stay at the Marine Hotel. Katie took me upstairs again and ushered me into a largish room looking on the High Street. Most of its space was occupied by a double bed. The windows had certainly not been opened for a month.
I said that would do and asked about dinner.
‘You can ’ave what you like,’ said Katie. ‘We ’aven’t got nothing in, but I’ll run round and get it.’
Knowing English inns, I ordered a fried sole and a grilled chop. Then I went for a stroll. I walked down to the beach and found that they had built an esplanade, and there was a row of bungalows and villas where I remembered only wind-swept fields. But they were seedy and bedraggled, and I guessed that even after all these years Lord George’s dream of turning Blackstable into a popular seaside resort had not come true. A retired military man, a pair of elderly ladies walked along the crumbling asphalt. It was incredibly dreary. A chill wind was blowing and a light drizzle swept over from the sea.
I went back into the town and here, in the space between the Bear and Key and the Duke of Kent, were little knots of men standing about notwithstanding the inclement weather; and their eyes had the same pale blue, their high cheekbones the same ruddy colour as that of their fathers before them. It was strange to see that some of the sailors in blue jerseys still wore little gold rings in their ears; and not only old ones but boys scarcely out of their teens. I sauntered down the street, and there was the bank re-fronted, but the stationery shop where I had bought paper and wax to make rubbings with an obscure writer whom I had met by chance was unchanged; there were two or three cinemas, and their garish posters suddenly gave the prim street a dissipated air so that it looked like a respectable elderly woman who had taken a drop too much.
It was cold and cheerless in the commercial room where I ate my dinner alone at a large table laid for six. I was served by the slatternly Katie. I asked if I could have a fire.
‘Not in June,’ she said. ‘We don’t ’ave fires after April.’
‘I’ll pay for it,’ I protested.
‘Not in June. In October, yes, but not in June.’
When I had finished I went into the bar to have a glass of port.
&nb
sp; ‘Very quiet,’ I said to the shingled barmaid. ‘
Yes, it is quiet,’ she answered.
‘I should have thought on a Friday night you’d have quite a lot of people in here.’
‘Well, one would think that, wouldn’t one?’
Then a stout, red-faced man with a close-cropped head of grey hair came in from the back and I guessed, that this was my host.
‘Are you Mr Brentford?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I knew your father. Will you have a glass of port?’
I told him my name, in the days of his boyhood better known than any other at Blackstable, but somewhat to my mortification I saw that it aroused no echo in his memory. He consented, however, to let me stand him a glass of port.
‘Down here on business?’ he asked me. ‘We get quite a few commercial gents at one time and another. We always like to do what we can for them.’
I told him that I had come down to see Mrs Driffield, and left him to guess on what errand.
‘I used to see a lot of the old man,’ said Mr Brentford. ‘He used to be very partial to dropping in here and having his glass of bitter. Mind you, I don’t say he ever got tiddly, but he used to like to sit in the bar and talk. My word, he’d talk by the hour, and he never cared who he talked to. Mrs Driffield didn’t half like his coming here. He’d slip away, out of the house, without saying a word to anybody, and come toddling down. You know it’s a bit of a walk for a man of that age. Of course when they missed him Mrs Driffield knew where he was, and she used to telephone and ask if he was here. Then she’d drive over in the car and go in and see my wife. “You go in and fetch him, Mrs Brentford,” she’d say; “I don’t like to go in the bar meself, not with all those men hanging about”; so Mrs Brentford would come in and she’d say, “Now, Mr Driffield, Mrs Driffield’s come for you in the car, so you’d better finish your beer and let her take you home.” He used to ask Mrs Brentford not to say he was here when Mrs Driffield rang up, but of course we couldn’t do that. He was an old man and all that, and we didn’t want to take the responsibility. He was born in the parish, you know, and his first wife, she was a Blackstable girl. She’s been dead these many years. I never knew her. He was a funny old fellow. No side, you know; they tell me they thought a rare lot of him in London, and when he died the papers were full of him; but you’d never have known it to talk to him. He might have been just nobody, like you and me. Of course we always tried to make him comfortable; we tried to get him to sit in one of them easy-chairs, but no, he must sit up at the bar; he said he liked to feel his feet on a rail. My belief is he was happier here than anywhere. He always said he liked a bar. He said you saw life there, and he said he’d always loved life. Quite a character he was. Reminded me of my father except that my old governor never read a book in his life and he drank a bottle of French brandy a day and he was seventy-eight when he died and his last illness was his first. I quite missed old Driffield when he popped off. I was only saying to Mrs Brentford the other day, Td like to read one of his books some time. They tell me he wrote several about these parts.’